The Liberty Basic Newsletter - Issue #115 - December 2003
© 2003, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lbnews/
[http://libertybasicuniversity.com/lbnews/]
All Rights Reserved
Please download the Zip Archive of this issue to get all associated files
"Oh, drat these computers. They're so naughty and so complex I could pinch them." -- Marvin the Martian from a Looney Tunes cartoon. Listen to Marvin if you are on the net!
In this issue:
TCP/IP Tutorial - By Alex Davies
Rich Text Format Help - by Jim Brossman
Creating Graphics for Games - By Gordon Rahman
Automatic Menu - By Gordon Sweet
Humble CAD Viewer - By Tom Nally
Demo: Aligning Numbers - By Bill Jennings
A Few Thoughts On Cross-Platform Help - By Tom Nally
Not In this issue:
- Breaking News! Carl sells Liberty BASIC for MacOS to Apple Computer! Apple CEO Steve Jobs cancels development immediately fearing that LB for MacOS will become simple, effective and wildly popular...just like HyperCard!
- Breaking News! Carl releases Liberty BASIC for Unix! Immediately, eight different versions of LB for Unix are developed for each different hardware platform. Meanwhile, 60 unique newsgroups are spawned to provide support for compiling LB for all the different hardware and Unix OS permutations!
- Breaking News! New book from Liberty BASIC Press: My Dawg Eight My Homework! by Carl Gundel! Carl reveals the right way to discuss integers with your pets!
- So soon? Yikes! Carl tests new commands for LB5!
- DYNAMICTEXT - Similar to STATICTEXT except that the text of the control changes to something random with each mousemove event.
- SHAVE$() - A function similar to TRIM$() except that it removes leading and trailing spaces while leaving no unsightly stubble behind.
- TEXCOUNT(#handle) - A function which gets a count of bytes in a serial communications transmit queue outbound from the Great State of Texas.
- SCAM - Similar to SCAN. Causes Liberty BASIC to stop what it is doing for a moment, process Windows keyboard and mouse messages, and send Nigerian scam letters to everyone in your email address book. Great fun for the whole family!
- Breaking News! Alyce pronounces NL115, "...not even a worthy leisure-time alternative to My Mother The Car reruns...succeeds in inducing sleep for the sleepless." Alyce recommends spending your time watching Slam Dunk Ernest instead! Alyce advises Nally not to take cartoon characters seriously.
Notes from the Editor
Zowie! Is Marvin the Martian speaking the truth or what?! I wish I could have been there in person when he first said it! Does anyone know if I could buy his autograph on Ebay, maybe? Sure hope so. Anyway, not only are computers complex as hardware devices, but the software systems they employ to help us get our work done are pretty doggone complex too.
Today, however, Alex Davies helps demystify some of the complexity with his very nicely written tutorial on the Mesock.dll implementation TCP/IP. Guess what, friends. It's not quite as complicated as you might have imagined. Alex discusses the four functions available from within Mesock.dll, and how they are used in 'net applications. Finally, Alex even provides a mail client written in LB. Very good job, Alex.
Following Alex is Jim Brossman's great-looking RTF Help Application. Jim has fused contributions from Tom Nally, John Davidson, Alyce Watson and Dennis McKinney to create a very compelling help application. Take a look! You'll be very pleased at what Jim has done! Thanks, Jim.
Next up, Gordon Rahman shares his experience in creating game graphics. Graphics development is definitely a separate skill from code writing, and a highly-coveted one at that. Gordon is fortunate to have it! Thanks, Gordon.
Gordon Sweet keeps his contribution stream flowing with his clever program to automatically create a program-launching menu system. Gordon's application is very useful if you have a folder which holds multiple TKN files. Just drop a tokenized version of Gordon's application into that folder. The program will identify all TKN files in that folder, and create a button-menu system for launching each application. Way to go, Gordon!
Because Tom Nally has never known when enough is enough, he provides another application using the functions ScreenX() and ScreenY(). This one is called Humble CAD Viewer. Humble CAD Viewer (HCV) makes it easy to move the camera around 3D wire model images created with Humble CAD.
Following HVC is a very nicely-crafted demo program by Bill Jennings showing how to align numbers within TextBoxes, TextEditors and GraphicBoxes without relying on fixed-width fonts. Bill's demo does it all: align left, align right, and align decimal. There is something about simple but elegantly-rendered applications that I really like. This is one of 'em. Thanks, Bill.
Next, Nally provides an article called A Few Thoughts on Cross-Platform Help. With the expectation that Liberty BASIC may evolve into a cross-platform language, wouldn't it be nice if we had cross-platform help-authoring also? (Memo to all of us: we already do have cross-platform help, in a way.) In the article, Nally makes the argument that WikiWriter seems to be very nicely positioned to be the cross-platform help-authoring application of choice in the near term.
Whoohoo! I'd like to keep going, my friends, but all this fun has made me dizzy! See you guys at NL-one-one-eight, if not sooner!
Liberty BASIC Newsletter 115 is now secure. Nally out.
SUBMISSIONS
The Liberty BASIC Newsletter encourages all LB programmers to submit articles for publication. Everyone has something valuable to say, from beginners to veteran LBers. Consider sharing a code routine, with explanation. Perhaps you can review a favorite LB website, or program, or coding tool? Why not submit a list of questions that have been nagging at you? How about sharing your favorite algorithm?
The Publishing Team:
Alyce Watson: alycewatson@charter.net
Brad Moore: brad.moore@weyerhaeuser.com
Tom Nally: SteelWeaver52@aol.com
Carl Gundel: carlg@libertybasic.com
Bill Jennings: bbjen@bigfoot.com